It’s a standard tactic of dispute resolution. When faced with people who cannot agree on anything, it can instead be useful to get them talking about the distant future. If they can agree on where they see their relationship in 10 years’ time, then maybe they can start to agree on how to get there.

Such is the thinking behind the so-called “road map" to Europe’s future – a seven-page draft document discussed in Brussels on Friday by the heads of the 17 countries that share the ill-designed euro. Dismissed as a “road map to a road map" it is a very European document – full of vague vision statements and no verifiable commitments.

But this wishy-washy report may be the only way for Europe to beat a path through the thicket of differing economic visions, political realities and personal animosities that surrounds it and has kept it in crisis mode for more than two years.

Since European integration began with the welding of Western Europe’s coal and steel industries in 1951, very little can happen without Germany and France being on the same page.

Co-operation between the leaders of the two largest economies is critical to resolving the euro’s defects, but to watch German Chancellor
Angela Merkel
and French President
François Hollande
at their joint press conference on Wednesday, on the eve of the summit of European leaders, the two seemed to stand more apart than ever.

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Standing before French guards on the steps of the French president’s Parisian home at the Elysée Palace, each gave a short speech on what they thought must be done. Speaking in their own languages – Hollande cannot speak German while Merkel knows very little French – the incomprehension was mutual.

But when Hollande mentioned the need for solidarité – French political speak for getting Germany to put its money on the table and commit to bailing out Spain, Italy and whoever follows it into bankruptcy – Merkel’s eyes briefly rolled skywards. Perhaps it was just an involuntary twitch.

France’s new president has broken with the immediate past during which, he believes, his predecessor Nicholas Sarkozy was all too ready to fall in behind Berlin. Hollande has denounced the focus on “all-out austerity", which in his view has taken Europe to the brink, and has called for sharing funding costs by getting all governments to issue and individually be liable for euro bonds. He resists German calls for more national sovereignty to be transferred to Brussels.

He is also reorienting Europe’s power dynamics away from the traditional Franco-German axis and meeting more regularly with the leaders of Spain and Italy, whose economies are in the eye of the crisis and who agree with his belief that Europe needs to pool resources and share its debts.

Concessions won by Italy and Spain to lower their borrowing costs, with the backing of Hollande, show how powerful this new bloc can be.

But at risk is further isolation of Germany and having its patience wear out. Merkel lost the fight on Friday and has agreed to allow Europe’s bailout funds to buy Spanish and Italian government bonds, but she had made clear to Germany’s parliament that sharing debts is firmly off-limits, saying she doubts she will see Eurobonds in her lifetime. Some 70 per cent of Germans are opposed to greater generosity to the rest of Europe and members of the Bundestag are hostile to further bailouts.

Transfer of power to Brussels or allowing Germany to assume the liabilities of other countries’ debts will require a parliamentary vote to change Germany’s constitution. Such a vote is likely to cause the collapse of the coalition underpinning Merkel’s government.

London-based think-tank Centre for European Reform director Charles Grant says the disconnect between Paris and Berlin is destabilising the euro and, unless resolved, will make the single currency unsustainable. Germany needs to accept some form of sharing of Europe’s debts, while France must allow greater structural reforms and more European Union sway over its budgets.

“At the moment such a grand bargain is impossible, and not only because Paris and Berlin are far apart on policy," he says. “Merkel and Hollande do not trust each other."

Enter the match-makers. The presidents of all the major bodies that make up Europe – the European Commission, European Central Bank, euro group and European Council – have spent the last few weeks sketching out a 10-year plan to move Europe towards a fully integrated economy with a common system for banking supervision, more control from Brussels over national budgets and highly tentative steps towards those euro bonds that Merkel says she will only see over her dead body.

The seven-page document has been panned for lacking details. But it is also being likened to “Europe 2.0" – a chance to reboot the single currency’s faulty architecture and redesign Europe in a way that will resolve the crisis once and for all.

Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group analyst Mujtaba Rahman says from a historical perspective, the road map constitutes an important signal – countries are willing to keep moving down the path of closer economic integration to address the euro’s design flaws. It is an important step, he says.

If those flaws aren’t addressed, then irreconcilable differences may cause the world’s largest economic bloc to fall apart.